Time lapse webcam?

I'm about to go on a 2400 mile road trip including pikes peak and I came up with the idea of getting a time lapse dash cam. I've been meaning to get a go pro lately, but I don't have the cash at the moment. My idea is to mount a decent webcam on my dash and just hook it up to my macbook taking one picture every minute. I don't know much about electronics, but I'm thinking about picking up a cheap 5mp camera and finding some software to run it. Has anyone done anything like this? Should I trust these cheap digital camera's claims of 5MP? If they're anything close to the 5MP camera on my iPhone, it'll be enough. Can anyone recommend any softwares for time lapse photos on a macbook? Thanks!

If you have any old iPhones laying around, there are some great time lapse video apps out there. I did this before, and made a phone mount out of a coat hanger and hung it from the passenger sun visor.

That's a great idea! Although I don't have an old Iphone, I could probably find a friend with an iPhone 3 or 3s they don't use. I found some cool apps that would run a webcam, but it looks like I'll have to upgrade my macbook to the new OS to run them. I'm leaning towards the iphone route because the camera will be much nicer than any $20 webcam.

You would need at least an iPhone 3GS, but I'd recommend an iPhone 4. Once the new iPhone comes out in late September (rumored) the iPhone 4 prices should drop. The app I use is called "motion pictures"